Technology transfer is not only of benefit to private industry
and consumers, but to inventors. In December, Director Charles Shank handed out
royalty checks to 13 Berkeley Lab inventors whose work has been licensed to
private industry.

Technology Transfer Department Head Cheryl Fragiadakis said the dividends from
technology transfer continue to grow.

"This year, the Laboratory is distributing more than double the dollars to
almost twice as many inventors as last year," she said. "Licensing of Berkeley
Lab technologies, whether as patents, copyrights or biological materials,
continues to be a critical component in making sure scientific discoveries get
into commercial use.

"I would like to offer my hearty congratulations to the inventors as well as to
the divisions encouraging their work, and to the hard-working licensing staff
that negotiated each of these one-of-a-kind business arrangements."

Gisella Clemons, a retired Life Sciences Division researcher who was the first
inventor to receive royalties based on an invention licensed by the Lab,
received her fourth annual royalty check. Clemons invented a method of
producing an anti-serum that can be used to measure erythropoietin, a hormone
produced by the kidneys that controls the production of red blood cells. The
technology has been licensed to Diagnostics Systems Laboratories.

LSD researcher Eddy Rubin received a royalty check for the transgenic mice he
has developed which express human apoB-100, a blood lipoprotein. The mice have
been licensed to Eli Lilly and Company.

Judy Campisi and Goberdhan Dimri, also of LSD, are receiving royalties for the
development of a biomarker for cellular senescence, a technique for identifying
cells within living organisms that have reached old age. The technology has
been licensed to the Geron Corp.

Energy and Environment Division researcher Greg Ward received a royalty check
for his development of RADIANCE, lighting simulation software that has been
licensed to the Genlyte Group, Inc.

E&E researcher Ted Chang and visiting scholars QuiQuan Yu and Yun Jin
received royalty checks for their development of a sulfur dioxide catalytic
reduction process. The technology has been licensed by The Ralph M. Parsons
Co.

Earth Sciences Division researchers Chin-Fu Tsang and Frank Hale received
royalty checks for their part in the development of a high-resolution
instrument/software package for characterizing groundwater contamination. Their
software has been licensed to COLOG.

Materials Sciences Division researchers Peter Schultz and Xiao-dong Xiang
received royalties for their invention of a method for combinatorial synthesis.
The process for making and testing many complex metallic materials in parallel
has been licensed to Symyx Technologies.

Diane LaMacchia, formerly of the Public Information Department, received
royalties for her production of two videos--"The Bevatron" and "The Search for
Heavy Elements." These videos have been licensed to Pyramid Films and UC
CMIL.

More than 400 children die every hour in the developing world
from waterborne diseases such as cholera, typhoid, and dysentery. Scientists in
the Energy and Environment Division have developed a simple water disinfection
device that has the potential to stop these needless deaths.

"The technology itself is well understood," says physicist Ashok Gadgil, who is
developing the device. "The potential impact is enormous."

In September, Gadgil and his colleagues shipped two of the devices to the
Virgin Islands for disaster relief in the wake of devastating hurricanes that
left much of St. Thomas and neighboring islands without safe drinking water.

The system uses ultraviolet (UV) light to kill germs, viruses, and molds.
Compared to boiling water over a stove--a practice widely used in villages in
China, for example--the UV disinfection system uses 20,000 times less energy.
It is also much less expensive, capable of disinfecting water for only a penny
a ton.

The method involves pumping contaminated water into a stainless steel
disinfection chamber, where it flows beneath a UV lamp. The ultraviolet light
inactivates the DNA of the bacteria and viruses exposed to it and renders them
harmless.

The UV system is being field tested in India, where cholera has killed
thousands in the past few years and where heavy monsoon rains add to water
impurity by washing raw sewage into wells and surface water. Already, the
fabrication shop in Bombay has given feedback resulting in a second generation
of the device--one that is lighter weight and much more compact than the early
prototype.

"Our goal," says Gadgil, "is something that is very low maintenance, low cost,
and can be built in the developing world." The Lab's Technology Transfer
Department has applied for a patent on the device--which has already been
written up in Business Week--and plans to license it worldwide.

Ideally, the device will become part of a village's normal water source,
incorporated into the daily water collection.

"The idea is that this device becomes part of the spout of a hand pump," says
Gadgil. "The pump lifts water into the device, which means there is a single
point for collecting disinfected water." The device can disinfect four gallons
of water per minute; by comparison, water flows from a typical American bathtub
at three gallons per minute.

Electricity to power the lamp is not a problem, since 80 per cent of Indian
villages have electricity. In one field-test site that does not have
electricity, the villagers are using a car battery that they exchange for a
charged one in the next town; their UV disinfection unit has been running
steadily for almost a year.

The plan for using the device includes a technician who installs the device,
then returns to the village or city every six months to provide regular
maintenance, replacing the lamp every other visit. Hand pumps in India are
already serviced regularly by such a network of technicians.

The UV system will benefit women who now spend hours and even days at a time
gathering cooking fuel, because they will not have the added burden of getting
enough fuel to boil water. In addition, there will be less pressure on the
forests, already largely depleted in India.

Alternatives to the UV disinfection system have drawbacks. If the water is not
treated at all, people get sick. Boiling water is energy intensive. Some people
add chlorine to water, which affects its taste and requires a trained person at
the site to make sure that levels do not get too high. A regular supply of
chlorine is required; the spread of cholera has been traced to interruptions in
the supply of chlorine. Chlorine treatment or appropriate filtering is still
needed in places where giardia are present; UV light does not kill giardia.

Gadgil and his colleagues, including mechanical engineer Derek Yegian,
engineering graduate student Todd Reynolds, visiting physicist Edas
Kazakevicius of Lithuania, and post doc Marc Fischer, have worked closely with
health and community leaders in India. A number of other researchers have
worked on the project as well.

CAPTION: Researcher Ashok Gadgil and colleagues have developed a simple,
but life-saving, water disinfection system.

Copy machine users throughout the Lab were unsuspecting targets
in a recent paper use study conducted by the Energy Analysis Program. The
study, funded by the EH&S Waste Minimization Program, focused on
determining the frequency with which employees double-side their copies, and on
increasing two-sided copying at the Lab.

E&E's Bruce Nordman monitored the users of the Canon 6650 II because it is
the most common copier at the Lab and has a very reliable and efficient
duplexing feature. He found that employees already double-side their copies
much more often than the national average.

Nordman enlisted the help of high school summer student Ericka Mosley to find
out if a reminder and posting of guidelines would motivate employees to
double-side their copies even more often. First the two labeled the Canon 6650
copiers with simple reminders to use the duplexing feature. Later, they
replaced the labels with a one-page "How to Copy More Efficiently" guide.

The first labeling, the simple reminder, resulted in an increase of 8 percent
in the duplexing rate to 40 percent, more than double the national rate for
that class of machine.

When the more detailed duplexing guide was posted, the rate of double-siding
copies remained at about 40 percent. Nordman said, however, that it might still
help to maintain the higher duplexing rate.

Even the small increase in duplexing is significant, Nordman says, because the
paper saved amounts to 1.7 tons and $1,700 in paper purchase costs just for the
6650 models.

Nordman says there are even more savings involved when you consider other costs
of using paper, such as transporting and storing it, mailing it, and disposal
or recycling. Each step adds costs, estimated from the study at 10 times the
purchase price of the paper. For the Laboratory, which spends about $200,000 a
year on office paper, this amounts to more than $2 million annually.

"The completely paperless office may be a silly idea, but we can cut down
significantly if we invest resources in doing so," Nordman says. He recommends
using less paper in general, and double-sided copying whenever possible.

For more information on the paper use reduction study, or for copies of the
duplexing guides and reminders to post by your copy machine, contact Nordman at
X7089 or B_Nordman@lbl.gov.

Laboratory retiree Mary V. Wildensten died on Dec. 1 in Castro Valley. She was
70.

Wildensten worked at the Lab from 1971 until 1979 as a technical writer and
editor in the Technical Information Department. As managing editor of
Research/Accelerators, she received a national award from the Society
for Technical Communications in 1979.

She freelanced for a short time as a technical editor and writer before
becoming head of technical communications for Cyclotron Corporation of Berkeley
in the early 1980s. She later accepted a similar position at Imatron of South
San Francisco.

Upon retirement, Wildensten became a contributing writer and editor for the
Sierra Club's monthly, The Yodeler. She was a past board member of Bay
area Community Services, where remembrances may be sent in her name (Attn:
Susan Garbuio, Bay Area Community Services, 7901 Oakport St., Suite 2400,
Oakland, CA 94621).

Wildensten is survived by one brother, David Vaughan of Bozeman, Mont.; sons
Craig and Roger; and two granddaughters.

During the holiday shutdown at the Laboratory, a General Accounting Office
investigation into the foreign travel of Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary found
nothing illegal or improper. Results of the GAO probe, which had been requested
by Rep. Martin Hoke (R-Ohio), were made public on Dec. 27.

A GAO review of DOE's decision to relocate NERSC from the Livermore Lab to
Berkeley Lab ruled that the move may not be as cost-effective as DOE first
reported. However, Dave Nelson, Office of Energy Research associate director
for computational and technology research, said cost was only one of six
criteria used to evaluate the competing proposals. The decision to move NERSC
was based on the recommendation of an outside panel of experts. The GAO audit
was requested by Rep. Bill Baker (R-Calif.), who represents the Livermore area.
In a letter to Baker, DOE Deputy Secretary Charles Curtis said Berkeley offered
"superior long-range vision" and "improved opportunities for internal and
external collaborations." Baker has said he will continue to fight the move.

Just before Christmas, DOE's chief financial officer Joseph Vivona
announced that DOE would not be reducing its staff to comply with a sharp cut
in its FY-96 administration budget. To meet the $41 million budget shortfall
for administration in the FY-96 energy and water appropriations bill, DOE will
rely on a combination of furloughs and early retirements. In report language
accompanying the energy and water bill, Congress said its funding level assumed
a 15-percent reduction in DOE's workforce for FY-96.

Finally, President Clinton nominated Thomas Paul Grumbly to be DOE's Under
Secretary, responsible for the Department's environmental, waste management,
and nuclear disposition issues, as well as all safety related activities.
Grumbly has been serving as DOE's Assistant Secretary for Environmental
Management. The President named Alvin Alm to fill that vacancy.

NSF
INSTRUMENTATION GRANTS:

The National Science Foundation will award a total of $50 million in FY
1996 to support purchase, upgrade, or development of research instrumentation
that is not usually provided for by other NSF programs. The grants, to be
announced in the fall, will range from $100,000 to $2 million, and will require
cost sharing by the awardee of 30 to 50 percent of total project costs.
Proposals for single instruments, large systems of instruments, or multiple
instruments sharing a common research focus will be considered. The deadline
for proposals is Feb. 1, 1996. For more information, contact the NSF Office of
Science and Technology Infrastructure (703-306-1040; ari@nsf.gov).

The Advanced Light Source has significantly improved its operations safety with
an efficient and simplified system for Lockout /Tagout (LOTO).

LOTO is the OSHA and DOE-mandated procedure for de-energizing and securing
energy systems to allow servicing, maintenance or modifications. The ALS is one
of the Laboratory's most concentrated LOTO use areas; it is estimated that the
ALS performs more than 1,100 LOTO operations each year, resulting in a
considerable allocation of resources.

Recognizing that the existing system was inefficient, ALS Electrical
Engineering group leader Henry Lancaster asked Electronics Coordination
supervisor Art Ritchie to create a Process Improvement Team. Ritchie appointed
Ken Baptiste, Jim Gregor, Rita Jones, and Bob Mueller from the ALS, and Keith
Gershon from EH&S to the PIT. After only two meetings, the team had
completely restructured ALS LOTO into a centralized system that is easier to
use and 50 percent more efficient than the old system.

"The first thing we found was that the physical layout of the ALS was
responsible for a lot of wasted time," Ritchie says. "Technicians spent an
inordinate amount of time traversing the storage ring because the work site is
usually nowhere near the LOTO equipment and logbooks."

Ritchie immediately started work on a custom LOTO center located inside the
ring, where most of the LOTOs occur. All locks, tags, logbooks, and accessories
are now found in one convenient location near the work sites.

"This is a substantial safety improvement," says Gershon. "Whenever the
individual worker perceives that his time is being wasted, he is less likely to
implement safety procedures. A common cause of workplace injuries is time
pressure. The ALS has always been very serious about LOTO, and with this new
system the ALS shows that safety and efficiency can be compatible."

Anyone who would like to duplicate the LOTO center may obtain the drawings from
Ritchie at X4785.

CAPTION: A Process Improvement Team consisting of (top row) Keith Gershon,
Ken Baptiste, Bob Mueller and (bottom row) Jim Gregor, Rita Jones, and Art
Ritchie developed a new and improved lockout/tag-out system for the Advanced
Light Source.

The Berkeley Lab Calendar is published biweekly here on the World
Wide Web and in Currents by the Public Information Department.
Employees can list a meeting, class, or event in the Calendar by using this
submission form. The deadline for
submissions is 5 p.m. on Monday in the week that Currents is published.

Monday, Jan. 8

Tuesday, Jan. 9

"Cell Cycle, Cell Death and p21" will be presented by Arun Fotedar of
the LaJolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology at 4 p.m. in Bldg. 66-316.

Wednesday, Jan. 10

EMPLOYEE MUSIC CLUB

General meeting at noon in the lower cafeteria.

SURFACE SCIENCE AND CATALYSIS SCIENCE SEMINARS

"The Atomic Structure of Hexagonal SiC Surfaces" will presented by Uli
Starke of the University of Erlangen, Germany, at 1:30 p.m. in the Bldg. 66
Auditorum.

Thursday, Jan. 11

SHOEMOBILE

7:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m., near Bldg. 77.

AFRICAN AMERICAN EMPLOYEE ASSOCIATION

General meeting at noon in Bldg. 90-1099.

CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTALBIOTECHNOLOGY SEMINAR

"Mélange of Below-Ground Research in Arid and Semi-Arid Systems"
will be presented by Carole Klopatek of the Arizona State University at noon in
the Bldg. 50 Auditorium.

SURFACE SCIENCE AND CATALYSIS SCIENCE SEMINARS

"Nanomaterials: A Membrane-Based Synthetic Approach" will presented by
Charles Martin of the Colorado State University at 1:30 p.m. in the Bldg. 66
Auditorum.

Friday, Jan. 12

CENTER FOR BEAM PHYSICS SEMINAR

"Experimental Study Of The Interaction Of High Energy (10-200 Gev)
Electrons, Positrons, And Photons With Crystals" will be presented by Ali
Belkacem of LBL at 10:30 a.m. in the Bldg. 71 Conference Room.

Monday, Jan. 15

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. -- HOLIDAY

Tuesday, Jan. 16

OPEN CALENDAR

Wednesday, Jan. 17

TOASTMASTERS' MEETING

12:10-1 p.m., Bldg. 2-100.

Thursday, Jan. 18

SURFACE SCIENCE AND CATALYSIS SCIENCE SEMINARS

"Semiconductor Nanocrystals: Opportunities to Create New Materials
Through Control of Size" will presented by Paul Alivisatos of LBL/UCB 1:30 p.m.
in the Bldg. 66 Auditorum.

BIOSCIENCES DISTINGUISHED LECTURE

"`Gene Titration' in Mice to Study Quantitative Genetic Diseases" will
be presented by Oliver Smithies of the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill at 4 p.m. in the Bldg. 66 Auditorium.